Archive of films Piazza Fontana: The Italian Conspiracy / Romanzo di una strage

Italy
2012, 121 min

Section: Official Selection - Competition
Year: 2012

The film tells the story of a huge bomb explosion which occurred on 12 December 1969 at a bank on Piazza Fontana in Milan. The background to the case, whose investigation was entrusted to police captain Luigi Calabresi, was so complex that the filmmakers didn’t have to romanticise any details in order to create both a compelling crime drama and a faithful image of Italy at that time.

Synopsis

The 1968–69 student-led resistance movement against Italy’s fossilised traditions eventually developed into acts of terrorism, culminating on 12 December 1969, when 17 people were killed and a further 88 injured in a bomb attack at the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura in Milan. The investigation of the horrific case was entrusted to police captain Luigi Calabresi. He and his superiors were convinced that, as in previous attacks, anarchists were behind the carnage. Yet further developments indicated that the trail led elsewhere. The background to the massacre on Piazza Fontana was so complex that it proved ideal material for a novel. The central character is naturally the policeman, whose life was severely marked by the case thereafter. The filmmakers didn’t have to romanticise: the reality was so bizarre that it was more a case of having to condense the facts, rather than invent any part of the plot. The result is a crime drama which also gives us a faithful image of Italy at that time.

About the director

Marco Tullio Giordana (b. 1950, Milan) debuted with To Love the Damned (Maledetti, vi amero, 1980), which won the Locarno IFF. Other films include The Fall of the Rebel Angels (La caduta degli angeli ribelli, 1981), Nights and Fog (Notti e nebbie, TV, 1982), Appointment in Liverpool (Appuntamento a Liverpool, 1988), Pasolini, an Italian Crime (Pasolini, un delitto italiano, 1995), One Hundred Steps (Cento passi, 2000), The Best of Youth (La meglio gioventú, 2003), Once You’re Born You Can No Longer Hide (Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti, 2005), Wild Blood (Sanguepazzo, 2008). Giordana has also published the novel Vita segreta del signore delle macchine (1990).

Contacts

RAI - Radiotelevisione Italiana S.p.A. - Direzione Commerciale
Via Umberto Novaro 18, 00195, Rome
Italy
Tel: +39 063 749 8244
Fax: +39 063 751 6222
E-mail: [email protected]

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About the film

Color, DCP
International premiere

Section:	Official Selection - Competition

Director:	Marco Tullio Giordana
Screenplay:	Marco Tullio Giordana, Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli
Dir. of Photography:	Roberto Forza
Music:	Franco Piersanti
Editor:	Francesca Calvelli
Producer:	Riccardo Tozzi, Giovanni Stabilini, Marco Chimenz
Production:	Cattleya
Cast:	Valerio Mastandrea, Pierfrancesco Favino, Michela Cescon, Laura Chiatti, Fabrizio Gifuni, Luigi Lo Cascio, Giorgio Colangeli, Omero Antonutti
Contact:	RAI - Radiotelevisione Italiana S.p.A. - Direzione Commerciale

Guests

Sandro Petraglia

Screenwriter

Giorgio Colangeli

Actor